Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Favorite Holiday Tradition

In case you missed my guest post last week over at The Mustard Ceiling...I thought I'd share it with you!

I'm sharing my favorite holiday tradition, but to be totally honest, with my little girl just under 2, we are juuuuuust starting to come up with a few for our little family of three!

Here's a little pic of our sweet baby K !

When I was pregnant with K, I learned about a book advent calendar and I just knew this would be a GREAT tradition for us! So.....I started my collection of Christmas children's books! You see, you wrap up all 24, and your children will open one every night until Christmas and you can read it together. How fun is that? (worth the effort of the collection process I think!)

(I have had this pic downloaded on my computer long before I had a blog and have no source, so sorry!)

I have visions of the Christmas book basket by the tree, and baby Kendall asking me if she can go open tonight's book for us to read together! (right now she just says "book!")

So far I have 13 in my collection and they are mostly board books and ones that are age appropriate for K but I hope to add a few more over the next two years to make my collection complete! Maybe Santa will bring us a few more! (wink, wink) This way by the time baby K really understands the tradition, we will have all 24! (fingers crossed)

Mimi I went ahead and wrapped a few for this year to let K unwrap so we can read them together!

I thought it might be fun if all of you gave some names of classic Christmas or holiday books to share so that if you would like to start your advent book collection, you could have some books to look out for!

Someone also told me that using the Christmas story from the Bible is a great book #24...

Olivia Helps with Christmas - hysterical! My husband and I still giggle every year when we read it to our kids. (Don't tell the hubs I said he giggles okay? :-) Mr. Willoby's Christmas tree is just good fun. The Littlest Angel is amazing, but will make you cry. Same for The Crippled Lamb. The education major in me MUST mention The Polar Express - Chris Van Allsburg, children's lit all star! The Doll's Christmas is my daughter's favorite now - it just captures the imagination of little girls - to have a doll house and a Christmas party like that. Amazing! See..... my problem is we have too many books! I did wrap them this year though!

We do this too! (Although I just put them under the tree unwrapped this year -- my toddler would have opened them all up at once.

If you want the Bible story, there's a lovely book illustrated by A&M Provensen (husb/wife) published in the 70s with gorgeous illustrations, sort of seventies/medieval at the same time.... It's called "The First Noel" and is the text of the Gospel of Luke (just the birth of Christ part). It's beautiful! My 6YO reads it out loud to our younger ones (4 &2).

We also love the Snowmen at Night books - they rhyme, which is always fun, and the witty illustrations also hide things on each page -- so you can find a cat, santa, TRex, bunny, and snowman hidden in shadows or branches or lights, etc. - very fun when the kids get old enough to really see them, and they're not super easy to find, so you can help!

And I adore William Joyce's "Santa Calls" - and anything by Tasha Tudor -- and oh yes, Hilary Knight has a few really beautiful Christmas books with gorgeous, detailed, energetic illustrations that are a joy to look at. The 12 Days of Christmas takes the song and turns it into a love story between 2 bears, one of whom keeps bringing the items to his love. And "A Firefly in a Fir Tree" changes up the song as 2 mice decorate for Christmas.

Love this idea! There are some great books out there that my children loved to read every year. One I remember, was the Crooked Little Christmas Tree....they felt so sorry for that tree every year. Our children have chosen their own ornament every year for our tree so instead of a thematic tree (colours etc.), our tree has history. Each ornament is dated so both of our children look back at the crazy ornament they chose. It makes the tree so symbolic for our whole family.

We do a book Advent calendar as well. My 1 and 3 year old boys love it! If you're looking for Christian books, try Room for a Little One, Mortimer's Christmas Manger, or Santa's Favorite Story. My 1 year old loves That's Not My Santa/Reindeer/Snowman and Dear Santa. My 3 year old loves How the Grinch Stole Christmas, which has a nice message about Christmas not really being about presents. I hope this helps you add some great books to your calendar.

Really cute! I have a 1 year old daughter named Kennedy, we call her K sometimes too. And like you, traditions are hard when babies are so little. A friend of mine said growing up her family all packed into the car with blankets and hot chocolate

As a former 1st grade teacher and lover of Children's books, I have a few Christmas ones that I am pretty much obsessed with: Olive, the Other ReindeerThe Baker's Dozen: A St. Nicholas TaleThe Polar Express {a must}!The Tale of Three Trees {a must for Christmas and we read it again at Easter}That's the short list, anyway!